Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, right, greets his brother New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller at the Little Rock, Ark., airport in this late 1960s photo. Winthrop Rockefeller won with about 55 percent of the vote in 1966, becoming the first Republican elected Arkansas governor since Reconstruction. (AP Photo)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS

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They are not the Kennedys by any stretch, but the Rockefeller family has had its share of tragedy as well.

Nelson Rockefeller, the former vice president and four-term governor of New York, died of a heart attack Jan. 26, 1979, at age 70. He had been alone with a female aide and media outlets reported that he died while having sex with her. The woman called a friend, who called 911 an hour after the heart attack, New York magazine reported.

Family representatives first claimed that he had been in his office, working on a book about his art collection.

Michael Rockefeller, son of Nelson and his first wife, disappeared in New Guinea on Nov. 19, 1961 and a book published in March makes the argument that Rockefeller was killed and eaten by cannibals in retaliation for the shooting deaths of five tribe members by Dutch colonial officials.

The officials, like Rockefeller, were white, author Carl Hoffman points out in "Savage Harvest," and cannibalism was a ritualistic act of revenge. Rockefeller had already made several trips to New Guinea to collect native art for the Museum of Primitive Art in New York City, where he was a board member.

His twin, Mary Rockefeller Morgan, wrote her own book, "When Grief Calls Forth the Healing," about Michael's mysterious disappearance.

John D. Rockefeller III, a brother of Nelson and grandson of patriarch John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil Corp., was killed in a car crash in Mount Pleasant, N.Y., near the Rockefeller family estate in Pocantico Hills, on July 10, 1978, at the age of 72.

Winthrop Rockefeller, Nelson's older brother, who was elected in 1966 as the first Republican governor of Arkansas since the Reconstruction era, died at 60 of pancreatic cancer in 1973, two years after he left office.